Hi all,
I've just bought a used Z600 with the intention of installing QubesOS, which requires VT-d (IOMMU) for Xen Hypervisor. After hitting problems with VT-d during the install, I'm now aware of some issues with the Intel 5500/5520 chipset, but can't be sure if my system is affected. Has anybody some experience with this?
I have a Boot Block Date in BIOS of 01/07/10. According to the note at the bottom of page 11 of QuickSpecs document (https://content.etilize.com/User-Manual/1019458200.pdf), this means I have C2 revision of the 5520 chipset, so that should be good news, but VT-d is still not working for me.
For those with the older B3 stepping, the following might apply: https://www.suse.com/de-de/support/kb/doc/?id=7014344 mentions that erratas 47 & 53 were fixed by BIOS update.
Anyway, I have the latest BIOS 786G4 v03.61. I have enabled VTx and VT-d2 in Security>System Security. I have 2 CPUs (X5675) with all RAM sockets filled, and have disabled all of the settings in advanced chipset options (Memory Mode Interleaving, PCI SERR# Generation, VGA Palette Sniffing, NUMA split mode) but I don't entirely understand if these settings are relevant.
Probably the best lead so far is from some instructions on the Citrix website (https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX136517_ga), and from Linux, I've get a return for 8086:342e (rev 13) which is an affected chipset. Does this mean I can't use VT-d at all on this machine???
My motherboard sticker says SP#591184-001 / AS#460840-003, and here is the full list of issues in the Intel 5520 datasheet.
Any ideas? Thanks for any help/experience